A handful of studios from the School of Architecture is doing just that. In recent weeks, students have completed a permanent shade pavilion in the University City Loop; designed a soon-to-be-assembled summer pavilion for the south lawn by Givens Hall; installed a temporary memorial to St. Louis abolitionist Mary Meachum and the Underground Railroad; and created a series of projects for the Missouri School for the Blind (MSB) and the Delta Gamma Center for Children with Visual Impairments.

Photo by David Kilper

Carl Safe (right), professor of architecture, and junior Nathan Brandenburg work on a permanent new shade pavilion in the 6600 block of Delmar Boulevard, in the University City Loop. The project was formally dedicated April 28.

"The hardest thing is finding a project that fits," said Carl Safe, professor of architecture, who spearheaded the semester-long Loop studio. "Fourteen weeks, the skill level of the students, budget, accessibility -- it's hard for all of that to come together."

When it does, though, the results can be dramatic. The Loop pavilion, located in the 6600 block of Delmar Boulevard next to Market in the Loop, is a light-footed composition of cedar and steel that maintains the airy grace of a garden trellis. The slatted roof maximizes shade at the height of summer yet is permeable when the sun passes lower in the sky.

Fourteen juniors completed everything from initial proposals and client presentations to securing permits, sinking foundations, fabricating steel joints and assembling the beams.

"It's really a very complex geometrical problem," Safe said. "All the louvers are at 30 degrees, but each of the joists is set at a slightly different angle. So the median is different for every pair of joists, on every side of every joist."

Dan Wald, owner of Market in the Loop, underwrote the $8,000 budget; Joe Edwards, who owns an adjacent property, and University City manager Frank Ollendorff also provided input.

"It's a win-win-win situation," Safe said. "Dan gets an improvement in his plaza, the city gets an improvement on the street, and the students get an improvement in their education."

The Givens Hall pavilion, which will be located near the intersection of Hoyt Drive and Forsyth Boulevard, is a room-sized geometric cube built entirely of simple 2-by-4 beams. Walls, ceiling and floor are all subdivided into 16-inch segments that push into and out of the enclosure, variously forming tables and benches, while the southerly entrance marks time like a sundial, interior shadows changing as the day progresses.

"The idea was to allow students to wear three different hats," said Yousif Albustani, visiting assistant professor, whose "Materializing Ideas" studio raised approximately $1,000 to cover construction costs. "They served as architects because they designed it; as clients because they had to pay for it; and as contractors because they had to build it. The class addresses parameters conserving the limits of how making and thinking come together.

"There was a lot of negotiation," he added.

The Underground Railroad project, located a few miles north of downtown along the St. Louis Riverfront Trail, is a temporary rest station memorializing the site of an attempted slave crossing.

During the early hours of May 21, 1855, a group of eight or nine refugees -- aided by Meachum, widow of the founding pastor of the First African Baptist Church of St. Louis -- boarded a small skiff for Illinois but were intercepted by authorities. (Meachum was prosecuted under the Fugitive Slave Act, though records do not reveal the outcome of her case.)

Lindsey Stouffer, visiting assistant professor, led four students and a dozen or so members of the Trail Rangers, a youth preservation/revitalization group sponsored by St. Louis' Grace Hill charities and AmeriCorps, through the "sweat equity" project, which will remain in place until a permanent rest station is constructed.

"The students had no budget, no tools and no materials really, so they began collecting things from the riverfront," Stouffer said. The result is a garden/seating area built of old timber, river sand and reclaimed bricks, its V-shaped line of benches overlooking the Mississippi while pointing toward both Meachum's home and the would-be landing area.

"It's a small project, but there is an impressive level of care and a real sensitivity to detail," Stouffer said. "The idea is that you can sit and contemplate their departure."

Mimi Locher, visiting assistant professor, tapped a similar community spirit for a studio based on a hypothetical Arts Center for the Blind.

By way of research, the 15 juniors and seniors met with representatives of MSB and Delta Gamma and then designed, built and donated four suggested projects: a hands-on display about carpentry joints; a prototype, wheelchair-friendly worktable (since close to 65 percent of visually impaired children also cope with additional disabilities); a 3-foot "black box" cube that helps young children learn to conceptualize the structure of rooms; and a large, outdoor sign/sculpture to orient Delta Gamma students as they arrive for classes.

Locher noted that the sign/sculpture project "was probably the most difficult to pull off because it was very conceptual and very formally complex." The class' solution was to create a highly tactile, tree-like structure that contains openings for a series of wind chimes.

Interestingly, visually impaired students who attended a review, "used (the sculpture) in a much different way than we expected: as designers, we tend to understand the continuous surface first, because it's a visual barrier. But they immediately wanted to put their hands inside and touch the chimes."

Locher added, "It was important for (the class) to see how everything comes together," from both an architect's and a client's perspective. And of course, "they were all very pleased that their projects would actually be used and worked especially hard because of that.